Could Internet Deprivation Be Considered Cruel and Unusual Punishment In Prisons?

Hey, folks. Something to mull over:
35 years ago, the Internet in the way you know it today did not exist.
You could not open a browser, shuffle over to the Bing or the DuckDuckGo of today and pull up a list of job opportunities in Boring, Oregon or find a welding school that would work with your availability near Macon, Georgia.
Instead, you relied on paper resources that may not receive regular updates at the start of the nineties.

But we've come a long way! America Online (later rebranded and stylized as 'Aol') allowed a computer with a special piece of hardware called a modem (that's a portmanteau of the words modulator and demodulator) to SCREAM over a phone line until a computer somewhere else picks up.

In fact, the Internet has come so far that Aol no longer even offers dial-up, states that offer LifeLine service to the economically disadvantaged give their clients smartphones with surprisingly generous data plans, and we're even connecting stoves, speakers, and washing machines to the global network!

Why not prisoners?

In this day and age where you can be hundreds or thousands of miles away and know within a minute of it happening that little Billy has turned on the stove (followed by a call home and a stern warning that The All-Seeing Eye of the Internet sees all, now turn that stove off, kiddo), prisoners in the state of Florida can not avail themselves of the use and utility of the World Wide Web.

People going home in a few years after doing a couple of decades or more come to mind: if they don't even have the basics of how to Internet under their belts, how are they to be fully functional citizens when they hatch from this prison egg?

How will they know how to spot scams when they try their first "lookin fr work" search, if they don't have direct experience?

Fences

I get it, some prisoners need fences around what they do. Like my old buddy Gummy Bear who can find gravy at any buffet ("Bro, it's a Chinese buffet -- that's the stuff that goes on Egg Foo Yung"), an enterprising person can find erotic or exotic content online.
Controlled at the DNS level, however, especially when coupled with the inability to install a VPN or access other circumvention methods, the ability to stymy all but the most dedicated smut and destruction seekers exists.

Honestly, with the people I'm around, you're more apt to find people exploring scientific questions or looking up sports statistics, exploring their faith, or the aforementioned researchers who understand that reentry planning begins the day you go home arrive in prison.

As example, weeks ago, I had a person ask me, "Hey, O, does super glue catch fire?" (O, as in Mighty Oregon, Go Ducks!!)
I'm actually not sure on that -- depending on its makeup, it might flash fire, or smoulder and dump smoke, I tell him; If I had a search engine, I could look that up. He joked that our air handler system must be held together by super glue and duck tape: our dormitory wing smelled like someone let the magic smoke out of some electronics.
And let's not forget my little brother, JJ, who went home before Yet Another Lockdown at Blessington -- there was so much I wanted to research for him so he could go home better prepared to live and thrive.

But No.

Florida Department of Corrections chooses to deny Internet access to the population who might use it to research law and their legal case, understand a medical diagnosis and how to live with it in a carceral environment, look up housing costs in a county in a different state, or play Candy Crush in a browser (that's still a thing, right?), all in the so-called name of Security.

Constitutionality?

All of this brings me back to the idea that denying access to the Internet could be a cruel, unusual form of punishment. In a world which increasingly requires the Internet for people to function, sending people out without the experience primes them for failure.

We need Internet access to be successful in this age. I say its deprivation must be an argument that this is cruel and unusual.

Yet another black mark upon this carceral state.